Sword Cub
by A Dyslexic Writer
Summary: He always searched for her. Death couldn't stop him from searching. Reborn into a new life in a new world, Shirou continues to try to find the path to being a real hero. It is a path that has led him right into the wolves' den. Remus is going to have his hands full trying to keep track of this over zealous cub.
1. Chapter 1

*Smack*

"I told you to never do that again!" My uncle shouted, his face blustering red as he stood over me. He was rather tall and broad shouldered, with the deep red hair that was common in the Irish countryside. As he breathed, his mouth closed tight into a hard line.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Thomas. It was an accident." I said, glancing over at were my aunt's prized vase flouted in the air just an inch away from the ground.

I honestly didn't mean to stop it. I saw the cat knock it over and just didn't want it to break. I wished for the control I once had over such things. Magecraft was just too easy to do without Gaia breathing down my neck, and so, I keep doing it on accident, even managing things that were outside of my element.

Guilt mixed in with the fear on my uncle's face. "My brother should never have messed in the devil's work. Don't let it taint you to, boy." He said, reaching down to try to touch my head, but I saw his hand pull back as if bitten. I didn't need to see a mirror to now that the bruise on my face from the hit was quickly vanishing and magic flooded in from around me in order to mend it.

Mana, the free prana of the world, healing. It was a concept so strange to me that I still couldn't grasp it after the five years I have spent in this life. I wished I had better control over it. It took actual will power to make it stop before by uncle had a fit.

It had not come as a shock to me when I had been reincarnated with my memories intact. It was part of the requirements miracle after all. I must search forever in order to find her. One life time is not enough, not if I don't become a legend. I would have to keep searching, lifetime after lifetime, in world after world if I wanted to find her where I know she waits for me.

My name had been Shirou Emiya, during the first life I can remember. Now may name was Oscar Myers.

I had been born in England, and shortly after my birth, my parents both died. No records were kept about the cause of death. My Uncle says that they dabbled in the devil's power and were taken because of it.

Thomas was a good man, but he was still just a man. He was afraid of the unknown, and magic was something he couldn't accept. His brother had been born with magic and grew up learning it from a secret society of witches and wizards in Scotland. Thomas had been booted out of the family when they found out, since it was a good Catholic family that believed that magic was the devil's work. Thomas Myers had grown up being told that his brother was taken from him by the devil.

After my parents, he brought a infant me into his home and tried to raise him right, regardless. I couldn't exactly blame him for the way he reacted around the unknown, nor could I hate him. He had been raised to fear magic.

"Just... try not to do it again." My uncle said as he bent over and lifted up the vase, placing it back on the table where it belonged. "Tomorrow is a church day. We can ask for forgiveness than... both of us can. I'm sorry." Without looking back at me, he walked out towards his office in the back of our one story house. He was mumbling something about getting his taxes done.

I sighed and started to pick up the dishes. My aunt had been working late in town so it had been just the two of use tonight. We lived out in a small town in the countryside of north Ireland neighbors were few and far between and my Aunt had to catch a bus in and out of the city for her work. I wasn't sure exactly what she did for a living though. It had something to do with shipping but that was as much as I had been told. My uncle worked a construction job a lot closer by. I was usually around the house by myself a lot or over with an elderly neighbor.

My uncle and aunt didn't want people to find out about my weirdness, so they tried to keep me as withdrawn as possible. They honestly were good people. But as time went by they got more and more scared.

The magic wasn't the only problem. They had noticed how differently I acted from other children. Unlike other five year olds, I was quiet, calm, usually thinking or trying to do mundane tasks to help them. I knew that I was causing trouble for myself, but I honestly couldn't act like a small child even if I tried. I couldn't even remember my first childhood and was never much for being around smaller kids. It scared my uncle and aunt who already believed that there was something wrong with me.

Today was the final straw for me. I just came to terms with a fact that I should have realized a long time ago. I can't live here like this. I can't deny myself what I am. Nor could I afford to simply keep ignoring the growing power inside of me. While levitating pot plants was no be deal, if I somehow accidently activated my Unlimited Blade Works, or caught something on fire, it would be a disaster. I could seriously hurt someone.

I had to leave and found a quiet place where I could practice, training myself until these accidents no longer happened. So I packed up some of my looser clothes and some food in a back packet and took a bit of money and left. I left that night and never turned back.

It was for the best.

* * *

I pulled the string of my blow back to my cheek, waiting for the right moment to take the shot. A deer stood just under a hundred yards from me, drinking from a stream. It would have been simple enough for me shoot it in a vital spot, even from this distance. But I wanted the shot to piece the head, an instant death, so that the poor animal didn't suffer, and when the flight time of the arrow was added in, that meant I had to take care of predicting its movements.

It raised its head, looking around before turning back to the water's edge for another drink. As it dipped its head down, I let go of the string, letting my arrow fly and piercing the deer's neck, right through the spin at the base of the neck. The reinforced arrow flew a few more feet and buried itself into the ground behind the deer. Dead happened so fast that the creatures body simply hung there with its face a few inches above the water before collapsing.

I already dropped down out of the tree I had been using as a vantage point and was moving in to collect my kill.

This was nothing new, I had done it a hundred times in the last two years. After running away from home I became something of a hermit, living by myself and living off the land, all the while practicing whatever magecraft I could. It seemed that for whatever reason, mana was readily available to some humans. While it couldn't be used to the same degree of accuracy or density as the Od that was produced by the human body, it was practically infinite.

Mana, unlike Od, also had no Origin, and as such even someone like me could use any type of magic with it. The realization was a huge shocker, after an entire lifetime of being restricted to a single branch of magecraft, I suddenly had an entire world opened up to me. The only problem being, I had no idea how to use it.

I could practically hear Rin laughing at me when attempt after attempt blew up in my face. I deeply regretted the fact that I near really listened to her about ritual based magecraft that utilized mana. Most of it was blood magic stuff that I would near have touched with a ten foot pole and would make any decent human being sick just thinking about it. How was I supposed to know that I would be reborn in a world were Mana isn't poisonous to humans?

Now I understand why everyone always complains about having to reinvent the wheel. The problem is, I have no idea where to get one. I need a teacher, but you can't just find such things in the phone book. What would the help wanted add even look like?

I dragged the deer corpse back to my little home in the woods and started to get to work cleaning it, setting out what needed to dry and starting up a fire. Cooking was unfortunately low key, I managed to pick some things from the woods that could be used to add a bit of flavor to the food, and I had set up a garden of potatoes back when I was first starting out, but I had no spices, sauces or grains. What I wouldn't give to be able to magic some up, but even though I was able to make clothes and cooking instruments in a few of my less embarrassing experiments, I haven't managed to make anything edible, unless you count salt.

No matter how good of a cook I am, there is only so much you can do with potatoes, meat and wild fruits and leafs. I was so sick of stew and jerky.

After mixing in everything I needed into the camp fire, I leaned back against my wooden dwelling and closed my eyes, trying to think of something new. Its hard to think of new things after so much time alone in the same place. I had to dig through my memories in greater and greater detail, trying to find a bit of information I've forgotten and that might be handy.

But in the end, all I thought about was her. She was waiting for me, I just knew it, but what exactly was I doing to search for her? I needed to become a hero, one who's name would go down in history. Easier said then done. To be far, I was only seven years old, and it wasn't like anyone would take me seriously until I was older. Still, it didn't feel right to just sit here in the forest doing nothing.

I sniffed at the air. The now familiar scent of wolves was in the air. I hadn't actually seen them, but there had been a pack in the area for longer than I had been there. Though the odd thing was, though I smelled them moving about and heard them from a distance one some nights, I never found their trails or any left over prey or markings. It was odd, but I never really had any reason to go out after the wolves and they never seemed to follow me. We simple left each other be.

It wasn't until today that they had even come in range of me hearing them. The sound was enough to pull him out of his thoughts. They weren't the sounds of wolves.

"...trail leads this way." A clearly human voice came from the thickets. I had to double check my senses because the two weren't adding up.

I weighed my options. If I left, they would still see all of my things and determine that someone was here. That would lead to me not finding out anything about these people who smelled like wolves and I would have to leave my camp. The kitchen wear and clothes can be remade, but my potato plants couldn't. Such a shame to lose them.

In the end, I just opted to sit still and wait for them to come to me, flicking on one of my magic circuits and condensing an arrow to fit to my bowstring, more out of old habit than actually thinking I was in danger of being attacked before I had time to react.

Eight large men came into little garden, each dressed in rather worn out clothes, two were holding hunting rifles but they seemed to be the only ones armed. One of them had a dead raccoon slung over his shoulder, so they were probably part of a hunting party of some kind. Rather outdated but I wasn't one to talk. They didn't appear to be related as far as I could tell.

All of them stopped and stared at me and my little shack home as I sat there in front of the fire and pot of cooking stew. I could almost see their jaws dropping. "What the bloody hell..." One of them mumbled.

Seeing as they had lost their ability to talk, I tried to engage them in conversation. "Good afternoon. I believe that it is costumery to offer coffee, but I don't have any and the leafs here aren't good for tea."

One of them walked forward. He was dressed in a worn out black shirt and jeans but he was the most clean shaven of the bunch. If I had to guess, I'd place his age at around fifty. He wasn't large or small and his build suggested manual labor, but the way he moved was more rigid than you would find from a man with battle training. He looked down at me with a clearly concerned expression as he went down on one knee.

"Kid, what are you doing out here on your own?" He asked me.

"That is... a complicated question." I replied scratching my neck. "Would you mind answering one of mine while I try to think of a way to explain?"

The man smiled and nodded. "Go ahead, ask me anything you want to know." He was trying to be friendly. I couldn't tell if it was genuine or not, too early to tell. It was almost always too early to tell. You could live with a man for years without knowing the skeletons in his closet.

But his puzzled expression told me a lot when I asked him my question. "Why do you smell like wolves?" The men looked rather sad at my question.

"That is... are hard question to answer." The man said sadly. "Did... you run away from home?"

Was he avoiding the question?

"I did, around two years ago." I admitted.

"You've been living out here, all alone?" He frowned.

"Weather isn't kind, but there is plenty of things to eat and drink. I've made due."

"A child your age shouldn't be alone."

"Someone like me has to be alone. I'm different from other people. If I can't control myself, then the people around me might not be safe."

The man looked heart broken. I wanted him to understand that I was not helpless, but I didn't want to give away any of my abilities to him, not before I have determined if he was a threat or not.

"No man was meant to be an island." He said trying to give me a smile. "What do you say son, want to join our pack?"

I could only blink in surprise. It wasn't exactly what I had been expecting.

* * *

 **Trying out the first person writing style. Doesn't feel quite right for me. I think I completely butchered it. Oh well.**

 **This is probably going to end up a one shot since everything feels so awkwardly written, but the basic idea was going to be that Shirou was pulled into a werewolf pack because they believed he was a werewolf. He meets Ramus there and they later go to Hogwarts together (either Ramus first going to school, or during Harry's third year).**


	2. Chapter 2

Why did the world have to be so complicated? I had just wanted to stay by myself in my little grotto and practice my craft. I was completely self reliant and involving others would only things harder.

Sadly, the men around me couldn't comprehend leaving a small child out in the woods by himself. I suppose I could understand that, I wouldn't have just turned a blind eye to me either if I was them. Still, I wished they would have just accepted that I neither wanted nor required their help and just left me be.

If only they tried to take me by force. Then I would at least be able to knock them down from a position of moral superiority and move along with my day. Unfortunately they didn't seem at all inclined to do so and knocking teeth in when they were only trying to be nice would have left a bad taste in my mouth.

So in the end I found myself tracking through the forest behind them, occasionally glancing down at their feet. It wasn't until I looked closer at them that I noticed the odd stitching jobs on there clothes, as if done by an untrained hand, even though the fabric looked modern enough. The shoes on their feet were much worse though. They looked more like socks than shoes. Messing lumps of fabric and duck tape.

Though they all acted as though they were in high spirits, it didn't seem to reach their eyes, as if they were all scared of something, or sleep deprived.

"Don't worry kid. You don't have to be on your own anymore. We get ya." One of the men, the man with the bow said, giving me a heavy pat on the shoulder, causing me to stumble a bit. "Name's Hunter, probably can guess why." He laughed, tapping at his quiver. The arrows were of an extremely poor quality, but more surprisingly, the man had made them himself, and he had used them. Not on any human targets, just in normal hunts of wild animals.

"It's... nice to meet you... I guess." I said, feeling rather awkward. Meeting new people wasn't something I was used to. Even in my previous life, meeting new people was usually coupled with a bloody fight, not with hellos. It didn't help that English still felt like a second language to me, leaving me with an accent. "My name's Shirou."

"Shirou huh? Strong sounding name. Got any clue what it means?" The man asked me, scratching at the stubble on his chin.

"Its Japanese. The meaning changes based on how you spell it. It can either mean, white, the fourth son, or castle. I usually spell it for the castle meaning." I wasn't exactly about to tell him my name was Oscar Myers. Honestly, who on earth names their child after a whiner? Besides, telling them that my name was Shirou meant that they couldn't turn around and look up my uncle.

"Japanese? You don't look very Asian to me." Hunter said, giving me an up and down look. I'd have to give him that, even in my old life I hadn't looked too Japanese and my rust red hair hadn't gone anywhere. Before I could respond I felt something passing over me and halted in my tracks.

My shock must have showed on my face because the older man who had first talked to me in the clearing, Chase, started to laugh. "It takes a bit of getting used to, but you'll learn to live with it." Chase said with a shrug. "They call it an unplottable spell. Stops people from being able to just stumble into this part of the woods unless they know its there. Of course, it doesn't really effect our kind the same way as it effects normal people."

"A bounded field. I... how had I never noticed it." I said looking around as if it was going to make a difference. It wasn't something that could be seen with the naked eye. The entire area was placed under a spell, one that hid it completely from the outside world.

The woods vanished just a few feet into the area to be replaced by a large plantation like area. Fields of wheat, strawberries, tomatoes, apples, lettuce and more. Things that should have been out of season in the summer were growing without a problem. A large group of sheep was grazing on a nearby pasture. All of it hidden from the outside world. The amount of raw prana needed to sustain something like this. It reminded me of something I had seen Caster do. It must have required at least four separate five line spells. Could normal people real do something on such a scale using just Mana?

Where all these people hedge mages? Had there been an entire community of hedge mages just around the bend and I had never even noticed a thing. The scent of wolves must have come from their common origin, the source of their magecraft.

It seemed possible, but something didn't feel right. All of these people didn't seem related, so was their common origin something that was put in them rather than inherited?

"Home sweet home." Hunter said with a thoughtful smile before shifting his quiver and moving forward.

"How did you make all this?" I asked them. Suddenly distancing myself no longer felt like the most logical idea. While they were no doubt a sort of cult, their knowledge of with world's mystic arts could help me move forward in vast leaps.

"Well, most of it was set up with magic, but we still have to put in effort tending the crops and building the houses. If you want to know about all that stuff, you're going to have to talk to Remus. He's the only one around here who's been formally schooled in that stuff." Hunter said, scratching at his hairy chin again. "Come on, we'll introduce you to him. He's the one who looks after all the kids around here anyways."

We walked along a path between the crop fields and towards a wire fence that surrounded a group of houses. Though to call them houses would be rather generous. They looked more like shacks that were set up for refugees rather than homes that people lived in, with board plank walls and tin roofs. And the fence seemed a little larger than what was strictly needed, being well over thirty feet tall. I was put more in mind of concentration camps rather than a little gated community.

The fences were drawing mana from the surrounding area, though not to produce a bounded field. The faint smell of oxidizing silver and plant oils came from the chain linked construction.

The fenced in area only had a single opening, and extremely thick steel door with an rather heavy looking metal slab to lock it in place when closed. It looked easy enough to open though, from either the outside or the inside, so I couldn't even began to guess the purpose of it.

Large dogs came barreling up to us as we walked through the entrance, big playful great danes that tripping all over themselves in there clumsy attempts to be the first to get their ear's scratched and meet the new comer.

I had to admit, it was uncomfortable to be bending my head backwards to look up at dogs. There drool came out of them in waves and slapped all over me. I was knocked clean onto my butt and had to be rescued as they shoved their noses in my personal space. This was why I was a cat person.

"Hey now, get off the poor lad. I said get, you stupid mongrels." Chase laughed as he gave on of them a playful slap on the butt. All of them were laughing at me, even the kids who had gathered to see what all the noise was. What a great way to be introduced to people.

A few light sparks danced in the air above us and the dogs scatted as if someone was going after them with a water hose, each retreating a short distance before turning around and waiting with wagging tails, as if hoping to be persuade.

"You shouldn't just let those dogs do whatever they won't. Otherwise they will be running this place before the end of the week." A new man said, coming up from where the other children were gathered. He was middle aged, his hair starting to thin and a less than well kept appearance. His eyes had the same tired look as the rest of them but he still kept up an expression of playful disapproval on his face.

In his hand was a short wand. I didn't know what it was made of or what allowed it to function. It was not a sword, or comparable to a sword, and as such wasn't entering into my Unlimited Blade Works. I would need to find a way to preform a structural analysis of it, but in order to do that, I would need to touch it. Something made me doubt that a mage would just willingly let me touch their medium to learn its secrets.

"Come off it Remus, you know they have been running this place for a while know. You can tell by all the tracks they've ran in the grass." Hunter said with a cheeky smile. "Besides, they just wanted to say hello to the newest pup." Hunter said, putting a hand on my shoulder and pushing me forward.

Remus's face fell a little as he looked me up and down. "Another abandoned in the woods. Well, we'll try to make you feel at home." He said, giving me a pat on the shoulder. I couldn't help but wonder if children being abandoned in the woods was a common occurrence. "I suppose I should introduce myself. I am Remus Lupin. I suppose you could say I am the closest thing we have to a teacher in this little pack of ours. If you have questions, you know who to ask." He said, presenting me a hand.

"I'm Shirou." I said, taking the hand. His hands were smooth, but his nails were bitten down to stumps. He must have had a nerve habit of bitting them.

"Hm... an interesting name." He commented giving me an up and down look. "Well, class seems to have ended for today, so how about I show you around a bit and help you settle in. You can stay in my place until we find the time to build you up one of your own." He said, leading me away from the group.

His 'place' seemed to be a two room run down shack with a single old bed, a table and a few spare blankets. "Its summer right now, so there shouldn't be a problem with me just sleeping out on the floor. I'm sure I can conjure up something only slightly hard and you can use my bed." He said with a smile. "I'd prefer that to you trying to use magic when you haven't had any proper training and no medium."

I froze a bit at his casual comment of it. "You can tell?" I was surprised that I had been found out so quickly.

"Your clothes, you've been using magic to resize them over time, haven't you? You did a pretty good job considering, but the coloring and thickness is uneven and there are several spots were the threading pattern reverses without reason." He said, pointing to my clothes. "However, I'm going to have to ask you not to try to force yourself to do magic any more. Its dangerous. You're lucky you haven't been hurt."

"Cou... could you take me as an apprentice? You can do... magic." I said, using his word choice, even though it wouldn't have been my own.

"Heavens no." Remus said, shaking his head. "I wouldn't even dream of doing that. You're too young to legally start learning how to use magic and the last thing we need is for the authorities to start hounding us about breaking the rules. They hardly let us have this place as it is."

"Authorities?" I said. Did he mean the Enforces, or this world's equivalent? Would they really get involved just because a hedge mage decided to take an apprentice?

"That's right. Underaged magic is serious business. They wouldn't hold it against you when you can't control yourself but there are strict rules about teaching children how to control magic. You will need to wait until you turn eleven... even then there might be complications, but I could see about getting you into a school." Remus said, shaking his head.

"I'm not going to wait. With or without help, I'll start training myself." I said defiantly.

"No in this community you won't." Remus said, wagging a finger at me.

"Then I guess I'll be leaving then." I said, making my way to the door.

Remus's eyes widened and he rushed himself to the door to stop me. "Hold on a second, you can't just leave. Its a hard world out there, and there is a bad moon tonight."

I didn't understand the comment about the moon. Maybe magic in this world was somehow tied to the moon. I'd never really noticed. "I've taken care of myself for years now. If I can't practice magic here, then there is no use for me to stay. I won't just wait around until I am eleven."

"Please tell me you aren't serious." Remus said, but he could see how stern my expression was. "Kids these days. Its even worse than with... never mind. How about we compromise?"

"...I'm listening."

"I'll teach you about the theory of magic, but you won't try to practice it. That way, when you become old enough, you will be more prepared to start practicing right away, but you won't be doing anything that will get you into trouble. Do we have a deal?" He said, spelling out our little compromise.

In all honesty, it was better than I could have hoped. Good enough that I actually became suspicious. What exactly did this man get out of it? Was he seriously so concerned about the safety of a child he had just met that he would give away knowledge? "Alright. I promise I wouldn't try to practice magic if you teach me about how it works."

He gave a sigh of relief. "Well then, now that that is how of the way, how about we prepare some meals for us. Better if we don't face tonight on empty stomachs."

He opened up a chest which appeared to have had spells placed on it to make it act as a fridge and started to pull out some things. My heart went up into my throat as I saw all the different ingredients. "How about I cook?"

* * *

 **Someone suggested that my difficulties with the first chapter might have had more to do with it being the first chapter rather than my sudden use of first person. While I don't feel like the first person perspective is doing it for me, I have to admit it has its charms when it comes to irony, mostly because everyone knows just what is about to happen and how screwed Shirou is other than Shirou himself. Still, it doesn't feel right to write in first person.**

 **My reasoning for why Shirou hasn't realized that they are werewolves is that in his own world, mages and the church were a lot more brutal and hunted werewolves to extinction. Unlike the Dead Apostle where any human who figures out how can become a vampire, werewolves require a werewolf to bit them in order to become one. So they could easily be hunted to extinction by people who didn't care about the ethics of it.**

 **Why would Shirou be looking out for werewolves were werewolves shouldn't exist. Though if I actually went by Fate canon, werewolves were something completely different anyways, not being cursed humans but rather just a species.**


End file.
